Travels to San Jose

We took off to San Jose on Sunday.  As soon as we pulled out of the drive it started raining.  I mean it really started to rain!   The road to San Jose goes through a big national park and has been known for landslides, which ends up closing the road for hours to clear.  As we got the the bottom of the hill to start our descent into the hills, many people were stopped and waving at us.  I thought how nice is that, they really do like gringos.  A couple of seconds later we turned around and asked someone if the road was closed.  Sure enough, a big landslide had just happened

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So we head back in the same direction to take the only other road to get to San Jose, which is a small two lane road that twists and turns through the mountains.  The trip that usually takes about 3 to 4 hours took almost 6 hours by the time we arrived at our hotel.

Going down route 32.

Coffee Fields

Turrialba

Cartago

Heading home thru San Jose

Tico house ready for Santa

Store front

New street signs in Puerto Viejo, go figure......

I think we are done for now!

One of the main reasons for our trip back to the US was to pick up all of our documents needed for residency. Once we arrived back, we met with ARCR who will handle the process. We had most of the documents we needed except for a letter from Social Security and fingerprinting. So last Monday we were in San Jose to finish up some of the paperwork for residency.  First thing in the morning we went to the US Embassy to get a letter from Social Security confirming my monthly amount (to meet the requirements of the new law).  We got there around 8:20 AM and were on our way to Casa Canada by 8:50 AM.  Once we got there and presented them with our letter, we then left to go get finger printed for an Interpol search on us to make sure we are not wanted by any other country.  We got there around 930 AM and were headed back to Casa Canada by 10:30 AM. 

Once there, we met with our lawyer who had us sign our application and pronounced  us done with all of the paperwork.  He will submit our application (as soon as the documents are translated into Spanish) and once Immigration has received our documents, they will provide us with a File Number which will enable us to stay in country (without having to leave every 90 days to renew our visa).  After reading all the horror stories from other people who have gone through the process I was expecting it to be more of a hassle.

The only thing left to do is get my driver’s license (maybe next month).

24/7

Granted I am not awake 24/7, but living here is like watching the Discovery Channel, 24/7.  Our living room is our TV that we watch most of the day (without any political ads for people who can not keep any of the promises they have made in public) seeing new things and wondering sometimes if it isn’t all a dream.  We have only really watched about 10 hours of real TV over the past three months.  As we prepare ourselves to head back to the northern frozen tundra to collect our important paperwork, I am sure that once we return and get thrown into the Costa Rican governmental process we will be wishing we still could be back home (Puerto) dreaming. 

We know that this will be a long haul, many trips to and from San Jose, but I am sure that in the end it will have many more rewards than not going through the process to obtain residency which will allow us a lot more freedom to move about the country and see some of the places we have yet to see.